The present invention relates to radio frequency identification (“RFID”), and in particular, to systems and methods for providing quality of service (“QoS”) to RFID.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a wireless technology that uses electronic tags for storing data. RFID tags are read when they are close to a transmitted radio signal from an RFID reader. RFID readers manage RFID tags and pass their information onto network servers, corporate databases and business applications. The readers typically act like a gateway between the tags and the corporate servers/databases by providing an RF interface to the tags on one side and another network interface on the other side.
As the price of tags drops, RFID tags will become prevalent in the future and as such will provide large volumes of network traffic through the readers. RFID applications include short range and long range communication and cover areas such as supply chain automation, asset tracking, medical smartcard applications, people tracking, manufacturing parts tracking, supermarket active shelves and trolley tracking, warehouse inventory management, security and access control, and livestock tracking. Telemetry applications include gathering data for temperature, motion, sound, video, light and moisture. RFID data from these different industries and have different requirements in terms of guaranteed delays and required bandwidth. Since network bandwidth is limited and congestions can occur it is important to differentiate between different types of RFID network traffic. A best effort type of RFID network is not acceptable for mission critical RFID data because it does not provide for guaranteed bandwidth or priority-based treatment of RFID data. It is therefore necessary to provide QoS for RFID data where the accuracy and urgency of the RFID data is important.
The present invention provides systems and methods for providing quality of service (“QoS”) to RFID to improve RFID network performance.